T220 Silver - Uncut Edition

[Pat R]

Originally Posted by G1911

I think we can say they are T58 because there is no other fish series of tobacco cards from the 1909-1912 period, and while this ledger includes N cards very precise dates are given on this page that rule them out. It can really only be T58. Some of the other sets in this page are difficult to identify (“Actresses, Athletes of America, Indian”), but this one is straight-forward.

I think the issue with comparing T206 to unpopular non-sports sets is that our sources for T206 populations (‘I see X more than Y, dealers have more of X than Y, pop reports, etc. are so heavily and clearly biased in favor of baseball subjects that no meaningful guess can be made beyond the most broad of terms in obvious cases (such as “T206 is more common than T220”). There may well be more T59’s and T206’s, it’s just that nobody besides a handful of us cares.

The ledger has some packs getting two cards, and the period ads show this as well. This doesn’t appear to be so for the entire production; if there is any evidence that every T42 was paired with a T206 I’d love to stand corrected. That this is true for both series of t58 in their entirety is a deductive jump. It is a mighty leap away from the evidence to state that there is a Piedmont T206 for every 10 Piedmont cigarettes.

I do not think we can reasonably say it is true that T206 was issued non-stop or almost non-stop during its production run from earliest date to last date, which all estimates seem to take for granted. We do not know this.

I know we disagree on the ATC ledger, but it includes some dates that seem to contradict internal and external evidence. Some series with a single issuer have multiple issue dates given in it, and multiple “stopped packing” dates. Much of it is missing, and it means we don’t know which sets all have these multiple dates and which don’t. The ledger dates are highly questionable, and even if the contradictions between issue dates and card text are ignored, they indicate cards were issued in a stop-start pattern, not sets for many months or even years continuously without break.

Frankly I hope you are correct, sir, about the ledger, and my skepticism is misplaced. That there is some logical way we can arrive at a statement that resolves the contradictions and without having much of the data originally present on start/stop dates and checks out as true. I remain skeptical, but I’m always skeptical. I guess, to extend the theme, this is my general disagreement with much of what is said to be so in the hobby - it tends to rely on a series of stacking deductions and/or conclusions credited to authorities and then referred to and repeated as fact, whereupon further deductions are then stacked on top, too far away from the actual evidence itself to be anything more than an educated guess at best.

The 5X more brands for T206 doesn’t seem a strong argument to me - the brand gap is mostly from very uncommon backs. Half of them have almost 0 impact on our total for T206, whatever that unknown and unlikely to be known figure is. Piedmont, Sweet Caporal and Sovereign of course are not 1/5 of T206 cards. If we want to go by total possible back types, T59 dwarfs T206 and must have had many billions if we use this logic.

I concur entirely that the 40,000,000 may not be representative of that sets entire run. I would think it quite possible it is not the entire production run, that multiple facilities for larger sets may well have been how it was done. We haven’t anything to prove this was done; but the bizarre structure of these firms and their collaboration on even small non-card orders for cigarette makers would suggest it may well be true. It does not appear to be the cards printed at Brett though; it notes in this section that Brett “burned out” (still not sure if this is literal or a comment on inability to meet the massive order in time) on March 30, 1910. The figures are for February 23 to May 16, 1910, according to the text. This seems to be the production at Old Masters Litho. Corporation, not Brett (they are presumably, from Fullgraff’s contract, the court records etc. very closely related or two subsidiaries of the same parent) - I haven’t yet got around to digging into Old Masters yet.

T206 may have had 200,000,000. Or 370,000,000. Or 500,000,000. I think no guess given can be close enough to the evidence to be reasonably accurate in any meaningful way. I would very much like to be wrong; attempting to understand the ‘true scarcity’ has given way to ‘relative scarcity’, and even that is a wildly imprecise thing of which we can still say little with any reasonable degree of practical certainty, to Adam's point.

Ok makes sense on the fish cards for some reason I thought there was another set from that time period.

I think Hindu and Polar Bear were the only products that Advertised two ball player cards.

I don't have any ironclad proof that the T206's were issued non stop but I'm pretty confident that they were.
ads for Piedmont, Sweet Caporal and Sovereign ran in sporting life from July-September 1909
ads for Hindu ran in papers from August-September 1909
ads for Piedmont ran in papers from February-August 1910
Old mill ads ran in papers in August 1909 and March - September 1910
the ATC journal shows packing and shipping dates from 1909-1911


No problem with different opinions on the ATC ledger I think many of the tobacco card printings changed midstream and unless there is a specific
card pasted next to a date that's wrong I don't find a problem with the printings on a couple of backs not matching dates unless it's off by an unexplainable amount of time.

In statement about the 5x more T206 brands I wasn't implying that it would multiply the T206 production by 5 over the T58's.


I thought the court documents indicated that Fullgraff was working for Brett Lithography during the time period of the dates in the Fullgraff book? I haven't been able to find anything on an Old Masters Lithography Company. I did find that it was a frequently used term in the business though.

You have probably mentioned this before but if the panels you have are from one sheet and the write ups on the backs of the T220 cards are correct they must have done the write ups after August 10 1910 and before September 27 1910.

[G1911]

Originally Posted by Pat R

I thought the court documents indicated that Fullgraff was working for Brett Lithography during the time period of the dates in the Fullgraff book? I haven't been able to find anything on an Old Masters Lithography Company. I did find that it was a frequently used term in the business though.

You have probably mentioned this before but if the panels you have are from one sheet and the write ups on the backs of the T220 cards are correct they must have done the write ups after August 10 1910 and before September 27 1910.

Fullgraff was definitely working for Brett when some of these sets were printed. he began work there early in 1909. 'Old Masters' seems to be a term in common use in the industry, but I haven't yet got to them as a company. The Fullgraff ledger has what looks like his business card on the cover for the "Old Masters Litho. Corporation". This has not come up as an alternate name in my digging into Brett, and the "Litho Corporation" part makes it sound like another one of these semi-separate businesses instead of an internal company nickname. It seems like a different company from Brett at this point, but we don't have much. His ledger includes N cards. Fulgraff states he's been doing business for "25 years" with the American Tobacco Company in 1911, which may be a rounding but if literal would place him involved with them starting in 1886 or so, in time for the N sets, in his mid 30's. I have found very little on Fulgraff's business life in the 19th century. Perhaps Old Masters Litho. Corporation is his name for his own work? What we would today call an independent contractor? That kind of setup might help explain his seemingly multiple employers, and conflicts of interest that don't seem to have bothered his employers. I will see if I can find anything, there are many possibilities.

For the T220 dating:
The backs of T220 had to have been finalized after August 10, 1910. Gans card very explicitly includes his date of death on August 10th, and he is included in the first of the two series. The Jordan panel bears a Brett stamp dated September 13th, 1910 with blank backs. I think all of these, save for possibly Beecher and Wilson that connect together, are definitely from the same sheet after piecing them together for a couple hours.

The ATC Ledger says they started packing Tolstoi backs of the second series on March 11, 1911, which is entirely possible and plausible but surprisingly late for the back texts that often cut off a year before that or more and ignore subsequent events.

My notes are getting quite long and I may have missed something or am having an idiot moment, but where does the September 27th, 1910 cutoff come from?

[Pat R]

Originally Posted by G1911

Fullgraff was definitely working for Brett when some of these sets were printed. he began work there early in 1909. 'Old Masters' seems to be a term in common use in the industry, but I haven't yet got to them as a company. The Fullgraff ledger has what looks like his business card on the cover for the "Old Masters Litho. Corporation". This has not come up as an alternate name in my digging into Brett, and the "Litho Corporation" part makes it sound like another one of these semi-separate businesses instead of an internal company nickname. It seems like a different company from Brett at this point, but we don't have much. His ledger includes N cards. Fulgraff states he's been doing business for "25 years" with the American Tobacco Company in 1911, which may be a rounding but if literal would place him involved with them starting in 1886 or so, in time for the N sets, in his mid 30's. I have found very little on Fulgraff's business life in the 19th century. Perhaps Old Masters Litho. Corporation is his name for his own work? What we would today call an independent contractor? That kind of setup might help explain his seemingly multiple employers, and conflicts of interest that don't seem to have bothered his employers. I will see if I can find anything, there are many possibilities.

For the T220 dating:
The backs of T220 had to have been finalized after August 10, 1910. Gans card very explicitly includes his date of death on August 10th, and he is included in the first of the two series. The Jordan panel bears a Brett stamp dated September 13th, 1910 with blank backs. I think all of these, save for possibly Beecher and Wilson that connect together, are definitely from the same sheet after piecing them together for a couple hours.

The ATC Ledger says they started packing Tolstoi backs of the second series on March 11, 1911, which is entirely possible and plausible but surprisingly late for the back texts that often cut off a year before that or more and ignore subsequent events.

My notes are getting quite long and I may have missed something or am having an idiot moment, but where does the September 27th, 1910 cutoff come from?

Donovan's card says that he's 62 years old and he would have turned 63 on September 27th 1910.

[G1911]

Originally Posted by Pat R

Donovan's card says that he's 62 years old and he would have turned 63 on September 27th 1910.

Gotcha. It’s a little odd how the backs of T220 don’t follow much of a design pattern, like T205, T201, T53, T118, T29-2, the other ATC sets with texts back generally follow a uniform format within a set, T220 almost seems random.